Purchased content has disappeared from my TV library

Question

Purchased content has disappeared from my TV library

A number of movies and TV shows that I purchased through the TV app have now disappeared. I can find some of them in my purchase history but there’s no provision there for re-downloading. If I search for a specific TV show in the TV app (searching all content, not just my library), I get “not found” for some of these or “no longer available” for others.

I vaguely understand the horse-trading that goes on as Apple negotiates deals with content providers, but these are purchased. They shouldn’t get stripped from my library, and if they do I should be able to re-download them.

If Apple’s solution is “well, you shoulda saved all your content in a local repository”, that would seem to run counter to the whole “Apple is safe; keep your content in our cloud.”

Apple TV 4K (3rd generation)

Posted on Jul 9, 2023 08:22 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

emilio-lizardo Author

Level 1

124 points

Jul 9, 2023 04:16 PM in response to Urquhart1244

Store staff tried to be helpful, but in the end it was "too bad. You should've stored all your Apple content on a separate hard drive (so we couldn't just erase it without even a notification)."

I find this aspect of the Apple ecosystem to be really disappointing. This sort of thing could likely be handled far more gracefully if Apple actually gave a crap about it.

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Answer 2

Urquhart1244

Level 10

145,674 points

Jul 9, 2023 09:24 AM in response to emilio-lizardo

While it is possible that a certain title get retracted from the iTunes Store, it is rare (e.g. studio sells assets or goes bankrupt).

Please seek assistance from the iTunes Store staff for issues with specific titles.

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Answer 3

Clovas

Level 1

12 points

Apr 8, 2024 05:39 AM in response to emilio-lizardo

I'm experiencing a similar issue. I have an iPhone 15 Pro with 1 TB of memory. I downloaded my purchased TV shows, which include The Bob Newhart Show, Mary Tyler Moore, and Star Trek: Voyager. I purchased these shows years ago. I was in settings and I realized I had a lot more available storage space on my iPhone than I anticipated. That's when I went into the downloaded content on the Apple TV app and saw that much of the content was gone. And it wasn't as though whole seasons were missing. What remains on my iPhone for Star Trek: Voyager is one episode from Season 1, five episodes of Season 2, two episodes of Season 3, etc. You get the picture (no pun intended).

In this case, it doesn't seem to be a royalty rights issue as I'm able to download the files again, which is a bit of a slog. The reason I placed the content on my phone is that if I'm hospitalized or find myself in a situation where I'm confined, I'd like some familiar content to keep me company. It seems that I can't rely on my iPhone, with its large capacity, to retain the content that I purchased and downloaded. It's frustrating, bewildering, and just sad.

Why would these old TV shows that were purchased evaporate from my device?

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Purchased content has disappeared from my TV library

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